Daniel Eales is the Head of Digital Marketing – Subscriptions at Immediate Media Co, one of the largest magazine publishers in Europe, with famous brands including Radio Times, BBC Good Food and Top Gear Magazine. Daniel always works to improve user experience for the plethora of subscribers around the world.

We’ve been speaking to Daniel about the recent developments to the Buy Subscriptions website to improve the overall user experience for over two million yearly visitors and deliver an increase in conversion rate and overall revenue.

PureNet has been working with Immediate Media since 2014 when we developed an engaging, conversion-focussed bespoke ecommerce solution for their magazine subscription platform. The website was awarded with Ecommerce Campaign of the Year at the PPA Customer Direct Awards after the launch. The solution has allowed customers to purchase or renew subscriptions for print or digital quickly and easily. Since the new platform launch, Daniel and his team have been working on further optimisation of the platform to improve user experience and deliver increase in average order value and conversion rate.

In 2018, Immediate Media embarked on an exciting journey to further optimise their buysubscriptions.com website using PureNet’s integration services to implement tools such as Optimizely, incorporating Tesco part payments, the use of gift card in checkout and implementing promotional engine logic while making sure their order processes were GDPR-compliant. On top of on-site optimisation, Immediate Media also enhanced the use of their online marketing channels, integrating Facebook conversion tagging to be able to track the digital user journeys.

Daniel tells us about the implementation process and what impact the different developments had on the buysubscriptions.com website, conversion rate and revenue.

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions, Daniel. Can you please describe the way you worked with PureNet to communicate and implement your 2018 roadmap?

Our close relationship with the PureNet team across account management, project management, consultancy, development and testing meant we were able to develop our features and technical roadmaps together. The valuable input from the PureNet team mixed with the strategic requirements of Immediate Media means we’re able to deliver projects effectively for our business – and we delivered a lot in 2018!

How did you determine which features took precedence within the plan?

We score our development backlog in a benefit vs. cost model, where benefits might include improved site performance, user experience, increased revenue, or a strategic business requirement, and costs might be development resource or missed opportunity from not reaching potential. We’ll also consider any hard deadlines (for example, GDPR related changes).

On top of overall UX advantages, did the integration of new technologies deliver additional improvements?

In early 2018 we undertook some technical optimisation and refactoring of the site to clean code and remove legacy functionality. This had a notable impact on page load times which decreased by 25%. Much of our 2018 roadmap was focussed on integrating new functionality – new payment types in particular. We’ve integrated continuous credit card, delayed payments for trial access, single free magazine issues, and part-payment vouchers. This work is in preparation for our multi-currency development in Q1 of 2019, swiftly followed by recurring PayPal. This will enable us to extend our overseas reach with relevant and more competitive offers.

How did the integration of the new features impact user journeys on the buysubscriptions.com website?

The ongoing improvement of the solution along with new offer strategies and growth initiatives across our marketing led to a record year for buysubscriptions.com in 2018. We saw users and sessions increase by 12% year-on-year, while our transaction metrics all saw growth: revenue (+14%), orders (+6%), and AOV (+8%).

We’re also delighted that we’ve received a Gold Trusted Service award from Feefo – a reflection of our entire subscription service; from website experience to receipt of their first magazine issue.

How are you planning to improve user experience for the Buy Subscriptions website further? What does the 2019 roadmap look like and how are you planning to collaborate with PureNet going forward?

As mentioned, multi-currency is a key development for Q1. We’ll also be carrying out many CRO initiatives this year, beginning with checkout improvements informed by customer data from multi-variant testing. We’re dedicated to ensuring our customers have a seamless experience on buysubscriptions.com.

We continue to build our strong relationship with PureNet so I’m excited to deliver another year of projects that will deliver growth for our business.

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